The incident happened early on in the flight-test program. On Dec. 6, 1972, pilots Jacques Grangette and Pierre Baud took off for the 17th sortie of the A300B1. Two flight-test engineers and a mechanic were also on board. Shortly after they started the day's test program, the two pilots found that the aircraft reacted excessively when they initiated turns. Baud, a former fighter pilot who had joined Airbus just three months earlier, was not too worried, but Grangette decided to cancel the rest of the schedule and return to base. In hindsight, there were many instances in which the A300 program-and with it the entire Airbus project-could have failed for technical, commercial and political reasons. Some are more well known, such as the struggle to launch the program via an extremely tedious process spanning most of the 1960s and then kickstart-ing enough sales momentum in the 1970s to allow a level of production that made some economic sense. That flight on Dec. 6 turned out to be one of the many lesser-known hiccups, but in some ways it was a close call for the program. More on that later.
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